‘Dead Rising 3: The Last Agent’ Review: Best Of The Worst

This is it, the fourth and final “Lost Chapter” from the saga of Los Perdidos. It’s a bittersweet end to what has been a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs. If you’ve followed my reviews of the first three Dead Rising 3 DLC packs, you know this is the part where I tell you that I loved the base retail release, but I’ve largely loathed this DLC. In fact, this has been some of the worst post-release content I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Mostly because it’s overpriced and lazy, but we’ll get into that in more detail in my review of The Last Agent.

The final of the ‘Lost Chapters’, thankfully, is one of the best. Unfortunately, that isn’t saying much, and it’s too little, too late. I had high expectations for this add-on content when it was first revealed, as there’s plenty of cool ways to continue the adventures and exploits of Nick Ramos and friends, but the half-baked missions and lack of effort into forwarding the mythos left me running from point A and point B once again, with nothing but crumbs of plot left for me to feed on.

It’s a total bummer too, because the plot of The Last Agent is one of the best yet. I’ll try to remain as spoiler-free as possible for those of you that want to pay for this overpriced season pass, but let it be known that you are ZDC agent Richard Park, one of the good guys. You know how those ZDC agents were vilified? He’s one of the clean ones, and he’s out here to save those in need and kick some zombie ass with his host of new weapons and cool ZDC vehicle.

The weapons in this DLC are pretty neat and the ZDC tank is one of the more clever vehicles in the game. You shoot a cannon that freezes the zombies then you can run them over and shatter them into little pieces of frozen zombie giblets with little effort. This was hugely satisfying, but in the end, you’re still just driving from one objective to the next like you have been for the last 30-60 hours (who knows?) and what makes it worse is if you’re at level 50, you’re not gaining any more XP. I hate this.

The mission structure is beyond tired. While the act of killing zombies in hundreds of different ways takes a while to get old, all of ZDC agent Richard Park’s quests are merely “go here, bring me X” or “go here with me so we can get X.” It truly is boring at this point, and it’s disheartening how little Capcom seemed to care about such an important franchise for them.

While the patch before the dropping of this suite of DLC really, truly improved Dead Rising 3 on a technical level, there’s still a weird and unforgivable amount of bugs months after release. Pop up is prevalent to an alarming degree, especially if you are driving at fast speeds, some button combinations are too squishy and unresponsive, and spoken dialogue is difficult to hear which is just another slap in the face of those who are here for more plot, because they like Dead Rising (like me).

Yes, I know it’s ridiculous to be into the plot of Dead Rising 3, but I am, because at this point at level 50, it’s all I got going for me, and The Last Agent has some legitimate cool things going for it as far as tying into the base plot… But I can’t hear half the dialogue. I hate this.

This encapsulates entirely into the fact that the Lost Chapters are overpriced as hell. It’s like one of those survivors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland who is selling his wares at ridiculous prices because he can. We get it, there isn’t much out for the new systems, but each one of these chapters can very realistically be completed in an hour or two (three if you’re a major completist), so let’s call it 8 hours total for this $30 season pass – that’s just way too much considering the content is rehashed in the extreme.

If there were more cut-scenes, dialogue you could here, and marginal effort in creating missions that had more than fetching as the mechanic, you’d have something that might be worth the near $8 an hour you paid for it (at least).

The Final Word:The Last Agent is the kid who gets a trophy for effort. It’s the best of what’s probably been the worst DLC suite I’ve ever played. This episode doesn’t make up for the rest, but it has cool new collectibles and isn’t quite as soul-crushing as the previous chapters, mostly because the interlocking with the main game is fun and something Capcom seriously should have invested more time into.

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Dr.murder

Serious Question. This game gets rereleased in 6 months with all DLC for like 45 bucks, is it worth it then? I love Fallout and Skyrim but I always make myself wait for the DLC to play it continuously. Just wondering, this is the only game besides Titanfall, that even peaks my interest for the XBox1.

Adam Dodd

I can’t speak for Jason, but I’ve beaten DR3 and played all but this DLC episode and I would answer that with a resounding yes.

Dead Rising 3 is a fantastic game that’s worth $45 on its own, IMO. I can take or leave its DLC.